Translating Myth

Date: 5-7 September, 2013
Venue: firstsite, Colchester, UK

An international conference organized by the Centre for Myth Studies at the University of Essex, supported by the Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies and the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies.

The Centre for Myth Studies at the University of Essex is pleased to announce an international conference to be held from 5 to 7 September 2013 at firstsite, the home of contemporary visual arts in Colchester. We invite proposals for papers (of 20 minutes duration), or panel sessions (three papers), exploring the theme of ‘Translating Myth’. The organisers would particularly welcome interdisciplinary contributions, especially ones that bridge the domains of literature and psychoanalysis, but we encourage submissions on all aspects of myth that involve the idea of translation. ‘Translating myth’ is to be taken in a broad sense as encompassing any topic that addresses the process of conversion or transfer of cultural sources construed as mythic. The organizers list the following keyword combinations as a stimulus to thought, but, as it always is with myth, your own ideas should allow the imagination free rein in deciding on the possibilities offered by the conference theme:

Accommodation and assimilation; adaptations of the classics; anamnesis and orality; archetypes, prototypes, stereotypes; astrology and astronomy; babel and fable; boundaries and interfaces; chaos and creation; enchantment and ecstasy; gender and hybridity; genre and media; illud tempus and terra incognita; interdisciplinarity and multiculturalism; identity and intertextuality; mask and mandala; migration and transfer; monad, binary, triad, quaternity; mythos and logos; omens and oracles; register and revelation; resistance and change; rites of passage and cultural transfer; roots and rituals; sacred and profane; stage and screen; storyteller, poet, shaman, auteur; theories, poetics, dialectics; transformation and transposition; versions and motifs; zero and hero(ine).

PLENARY SPEAKERS: David Hawkes (Arizona State University), Miriam Leonard (University College London), Harish Trivedi (University of Delhi).

The deadline for proposals is Friday 25 January, 2013. Proposals should take the form of a title for the paper and a 250-word abstract, accompanied by a brief biographical note, including institutional affiliation where appropriate. To submit a proposal, or for more information, please write to Dr Leon Burnett, Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ or, by e-mail, to mythic@essex.ac.uk<mailto:mythic@essex.ac.uk>.

It is planned to publish a selection of papers on ‘Translating Myth’ after the conference.

Further information available at [url=http://essexmyth.wordpress.com/]http://essexmyth.wordpress.com/[/url]

Note: Thanks to the generosity of the Bean Trust, a limited number of bursaries are available for speakers contributing to a panel session on the place that William Blake occupies in the field of myth. If you wish to apply for one of these bursaries, please indicate in your proposal.